


Best Friends

by yodepalma



Category: Yoroiden Samurai Troopers | Ronin Warriors
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Baby Animals, Crack, Families of Choice, Fantasy, Fantasy Creatures, Fluff, Gen, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Kittens, OT5 Friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-02
Updated: 2016-12-02
Packaged: 2018-09-03 18:57:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,657
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8726398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yodepalma/pseuds/yodepalma
Summary: Ryo is given a baby dragon. Things get a little weird after that.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Have you ever been staring at a (relatively serious) story for so long that you just decided one day that if you had to write ANOTHER WORD for it you would do something drastic like, I don't know, delete the entire thing and stop writing for three years?
> 
> Yeah so that's how the end of NaNoWriMo was going for me, and then suddenly I was writing fic for a fandom I haven't been in since I was a teenager. Hi, hello, how is everyone else this fine....questionable hour of the night/morning? 8D
> 
> I have basically no idea where this lies in canon, except presumably Suzunagi either hasn't happened yet or will never happen. Just roll with it.

_Best Friends_

All Ryo wanted to do when he left the house that morning was walk around the volcano and think about how everything in the world was his fault. That's it. Just a nice, relaxing angst, maybe he'd throw himself into the crater if he got bored (he had his armor orb, it'd be fine), and then he would go home and lean melodramatically against Byakuen's side until his friends either fed him or cheered him up. He wasn't picky.

So when the reptilian dragon-like...thing rose up out of the volcano and stared him down, he felt a little bit _put out_. Could he feel bad for himself for five minutes without something coming out of the fog to ask him to save the world!?

 _Rekka no Ryo_ , the probably-a-dragon said straight into his head, like in some sort of western fantasy novel. _I have traveled many kilometers to ask of you a great favor. I have reached the end of my long life and I fear I will not be able to attend to all of my responsibilities. Will you, Rekka no Ryo, take upon yourself the greatest of my tasks?_

Ryo wanted to say no, he really did. He already had enough on his plate with Arago, didn’t he? Granted, Arago was probably dead for good this time so he was getting at least something of a break from saving the world. Or he thought he had been. Clearly that had been too much to ask for. He wasn’t exactly going to say no to a _dragon_.

“Of course I’ll do it,” he said quickly, because the dragon _looked_ patient, but it had been staring at him for a while now. “What do you need from me?”

A bright light appeared in front of his face, floating there for a long minute while something dark twisted in the middle of it. Ryo wasn’t sure how he was able to see into the light without it burning his eyes but he figured, hey, dragon magic, better just roll with it.

He held out both of his arms automatically and the light floated down into it. Something long and sinuous coiled around his hands and arms as the light died away and he blinked down at it to find…a snake?

The snake twisted to look up at him, showing off its whiskered face, and dug sharp little claws into Ryo’s arms. Oh, right. It was just a baby dragon. Of course. Why wouldn’t he be given a baby dragon? This made complete sense, just like everything else in his life.

He looked up at the dragon looming out of the volcano again, feeling vaguely panicked.

“I’m too young to be a father,” he said.

The dragon blinked down at him with eternal patience. Its facial expression didn’t change at all, so Ryo had no idea how he could tell that it was disappointed in him.

 _Does this mean you renege on your responsibility?_ it asked him calmly.

“Yes—I mean, no, of course not!” Ryo still felt vaguely panicked, but he held the baby dragon a little closer to him just in case. “I’m not going to let you down. I’ll take care of your child like it was my own!”

With Nasuti’s help, he added silently to himself. No way in hell he was taking care of a baby alone; the thing would end up starving to death or something. He was pretty sure the only reason Byakuen had survived this long was because grown tigers took care of themselves.

 _Thank you, Rekka no Ryo_ , the dragon said, and gave something that was like a wistful sigh. _I think now I may finally rest in peace._

And then it just sort of…faded. Into the fog or steam or whatever was coming out of the volcano’s crater; Ryo wasn’t a volcanologist, he really had no idea what was going on up there. He really hoped disappearing dragons wasn’t, like, normal or anything.

He looked down at the dragon in his hands. The baby looked up at him, uncoiled itself enough to raise itself to eye level, and shot out its little tongue to sniff at Ryo’s nose. It kind of tickled, and Ryo grinned at it. At least if he had to have an unexpected kid, the thing was kind of cute.

Then it just sort of dove for his shirt, squirming underneath his collar before Ryo could so much as blink, and that _really_ tickled. Ryo yelped, barely resisted the urge to slap at his chest as he twisted in discomfort, and almost fell into the volcano.

“Warn a guy when you do that!” he cried.

The dragon’s head popped out of his collar, and it sniffed Ryo’s ear.

“Nnnneergh,” Ryo said, rubbing his ear on his shoulder. “Or that. Please don’t do that again.”

He probably should have expected the dragon to respond by sticking its tongue in his ear again. This had been a terrible decision, hadn’t it? Chalk another one up for “Ways In Which Ryo Fucked Everything Up”.

@-`---

Ryo realized, about twenty minutes after getting back to Nasuti’s place, that he had no idea what dragons ate. He assumed they needed some kind of sustenance, because they were, like, alive, right? But did they eat mice and stuff like snakes did? Or were they vegetarian? Or maybe there was some sort of mythical substance that he had no way to get that he was supposed to be feeding the little guy, and he was going to be the first successful dragon slayer of the century _completely by accident_.

Nasuti wasn’t in her office; she’d said something about grocery shopping with Shin maybe? He’d been settling into an angst fog when she left, so he only had a vague memory of them leaving. Anyway, Nasuti was out for the time being, so he tiptoed quietly into her sanctuary and poked hopefully through her collection of books.

He knew better than to touch the computer. Bad things happened when he went on there without supervision. And by “bad things” he meant mostly that Nasuti would murder him if he tried it again.

Women were terrifying, and he wouldn’t accept anyone’s reasoning in telling him otherwise. He was convinced that the only reason they’d ever allowed themselves to be subjugated for so long was that they were too busy quietly getting things done while men went out to play war. It was an unpopular stance, but it was clearly only held by people who’d never a) faced down Nasuti’s Disapproved Look, or b) gotten their ass kicked by Kayura.

He grabbed a couple of books that looked promising, and made himself comfortable in Nasuti’s favorite chair. The dragon resettled itself along with him, its tail shoving itself deep into his pocket like it was making a nest in there or something, and it curled itself up completely under his shirt. Ryo figured it was going to sleep or something, and let it be. He had research to do.

The books were…useless. Completely, utterly, stupidly useless. Even the ones about western dragons, which just looked bulky and weird and wrong, were stupid, because why in the world would dragons eat _people_? Virgin sacrifices, really. What was wrong with Europeans? Neither of the dragons had seemed even remotely inclined toward eating him, though admittedly that could be because he was doing them a favor.

But he _still_ didn’t know what to give his baby to eat!

“Hey, Ryo, is that a snake in your pants, or are you just happy to see me?”

Ryo blinked his way out of his inner turmoil and looked up at Touma, who had entered the room without his noticing and was now grinning at him like the crazy jerk he was. What the heck was—oh, baby was still in his pocket, wasn’t it? He looked down at his lap. Huh. It really did look like a, uh. Well.

He looked back up at Touma.

“I’m just really happy to see you, Touma,” he said with a straight face.

As Touma doubled up with surprised laughter, the baby dragon peeked out from Ryo’s collar to see what all the fuss was about. It flicked its tongue in Ryo’s ear again, which _might_ have been an accident, because while Ryo was rubbing his ear against his shoulder to get rid of the uncomfortable feeling it started sniffing the air in Touma’s direction.

Touma looked up at the noise Ryo was making, and looked suitably shocked at seeing a dragon’s face floating next to Ryo’s head. He still had tears in his eyes, and he hastily wiped at his face as he moved closer to it. The dragon, undaunted, sniffed curiously at his hair.

“You have…a dragon in your pants,” Touma muttered eventually.

“He started making a nest or something in my pocket,” Ryo defended himself. “But he didn’t fit all the way. Or, uh, she. Actually, I have no idea how to tell what gender it is. And no idea what to feed it. Please tell me you know what dragons eat, because his mother gave him to me and asked me to raise him and then I think she died and I’ve been looking _everywhere_ for information but—”

“Woah, hey, calm down,” Touma said, backing away and waving his hands in front of Ryo. “I don’t know what they eat, man, I’m a scientist. We could just put stuff in front of it until it takes something, maybe? Dragons are sentient; they _probably_ won’t eat something that’ll kill them.”

“There’s food that will kill him!?” Ryo gasped, and put a protective hand over the dragon’s head.

“I don’t know!” Touma said. “Some stuff is poisonous for cats and dogs that aren’t poisonous for humans, you know, I just thought—it’s a lizard basically, right? So meat, let’s give it some raw meat and lettuce or something. I think they like lettuce.”

“This is less than helpful,” Ryo whined, but Touma gestured for him to get up and follow him to the kitchen, so he went along with it. He didn’t have any better ideas anyway.

In the kitchen, Touma started pulling out all kinds of food and chopping off little bits to give to the dragon. Ryo and the dragon both watched what he was doing with interest. Eventually the dragon decided it was curious enough to unwind itself from Ryo’s torso, stumble across the kitchen floor, and start crawling up Touma’s leg.

“Gah, what the hell!” Touma said, jumping straight up in the air. Bad idea with a knife, but Touma was only smart when it came to stuff in books. He looked down at his leg, holding it out to the side, and the dragon looked back up at him, flicking out his little tongue in curiosity, and Ryo could swear he heard him ask what Touma’s issue was.

Touma sighed and carefully put his leg back down. The dragon seemed to take this as a sign that it was okay for him to finish his climb, because he crawled up under the back of Touma’s shirt (Touma failed to squirm, because apparently the cheater wasn’t that ticklish), then poked his head up under Touma’s collar to see what he was doing.

It was kind of cute. The dragon would lean over Touma’s shoulder like he wanted to get to something he was cutting up, but Touma would gently push him back with a hand, and the dragon would retaliate by flicking his tongue in Touma’s ear. This didn’t have quite the same effect on Touma as it had on Ryo, but Touma did make little annoyed grunts that the dragon seemed amused by.

Eventually Touma finished cutting up his supplies and brought them over to where Ryo was sitting at the table. He’d arranged a bunch of food into a circle of little cubes on a plate, and he put it down in front of Ryo with a flourish.

“All right, kid,” Touma said, clearly speaking to the dragon. “Go on back to your dad so he can feed you.”

“He better eat something on here,” Ryo said, glaring at Touma. “If he doesn’t, I’m blaming you.”

“Shut up and feed him, Ryo,” Touma sighed.

The dragon—Ryo was going to have to name him at some point, wasn’t he?—snaked his way down Touma’s arm, and then back onto Ryo. He crawled across his shoulders and down his other arm, and then leaned forward to sniff at the plate. Ryo helpfully pushed a cube of something indefinably pink and meaty toward him.

The dragon sniffed it a bit, turned it around with his surprisingly strong tongue, and then utterly dismissed it. Ryo gave Touma a flat look.

“I’m _guessing_ here!” Touma said defensively. “Just keep trying.”

Ryo sighed and continued pushing cubes at his dragon. The dragon dutifully sniffed every one of them, then casually dismissed them and looked at Ryo expectantly again. Touma eventually seemed to grow bored of the display and turned back to the refrigerator, pulling out a bowl of something and starting to warm it up on the stove. Ryo and the dragon ignored him at first, but eventually the smell of something spicy started permeating the air, and the dragon lifted from his disinterested playing with the food cubes to sniff at the air.

“Hey, Touma,” Ryo said, sitting up with excitement. “Check this out.”

Touma turned from the stove and his eyebrows rose up to hide behind his messy bangs.

“Huh,” he said. “Looks like the little guy might want some curry.”

“Some what?” Ryo asked blankly, but Touma hushed him. Touma brought down one of the little saucers that weren’t supposed to be used for anything except Nasuti’s weird French tea, spooned a tiny bit of the stuff in his pot into it, and brought it over for the dragon.

The dragon sniffed at it once, circled the saucer halfway, sniffed at it again, and then dived in so hard some of the food splashed out around the rim.

“I guess he likes it,” Touma laughed. They watched the dragon try to curl up in the saucer, but he was far too big to fit, and he made an unhappy sort of rumbling noise as he balanced with his front paws on the outside of it. “So maybe he just likes spicy food? I guess that kind of makes sense, you know, volcano, dragon, breathing fire, that kind of stuff.”

“Do you think he, like, eats fire?” Ryo asked. “How would you eat fire though? The energy from it?”

“You’re the pyromaniac,” Touma said, finally turning back to the stove. It smelled like the curry, whatever that was, was starting to burn. “Why don’t you go light something on fire and find out?”

Ryo looked at the dragon. The dragon seemed to sense his gaze and looked up from the dregs of his saucer, staring back at Ryo.

“Well,” he said. “Why not?”

He held out an arm for the dragon, and he climbed right back on, crawling under Ryo’s sleeve to come up around his shoulders and nestle under his jaw. Ryo pet him absentmindedly and went out the back door, figuring Nasuti couldn’t be too mad about him setting up a controlled bonfire for the dragon. It’s not like he was setting fire to the forest or anything, right? And it was just going to be a _little_ fire.

The dragon appreciated the fire, but it turned out that Nasuti really, really didn’t. Something about her lawn and how it was never going to recover and no, Ryo, Seiji and Shuu and Shin couldn’t just “fix it” and why would he even do such a thing anyway!?

Nasuti being Nasuti, the sight of a baby dragon actually made her calm down. It was apparently better than having a tiger for a pet, even if she would never be able to publish any research seriously. Oh well. Whatever made her stop looking at Ryo like his entire existence was a disappointment.

@-`---

The next morning, Ryo woke up with his baby dragon (seriously, what was he going to name the little guy?), and brought him downstairs for breakfast. Everyone had already met the dragon and taken it in stride as easily as they’d taken Byakuen (to quote Shuu: “We’ve seen weirder, man. When’s dinner?”), and watching it curl up in a bowl of spicy rice didn’t seem to phase anybody in the least.

What had phased everyone was Touma stumbling downstairs for breakfast, bleary-eyed and clearly not functional yet, with a chick on his shoulder. Not, like, a girl-chick, though it could indeed be female for all any of them knew, but rather a baby bird. It was very colorful, seemed to be just as awake as Touma was, and it was nibbling on his hair fondly.

Then it chirped, and thunder immediately followed the noise.

“That’s funny,” Nasuti said calmly. “It didn’t seem like it was going to rain today.”

“I…think it was the bird,” Shin said, eyebrows furrowed while he stared at the creature in question.

The bird, as if it sensed their confusion, chirped happily again. More thunder rolled. Touma eventually seemed to realize they were all staring at him, because he looked up and blinked rapidly.

“…What?” he said

“Touma, sweetie,” Nasuti said in the slow voice she only used when they were being exceptionally stupid and nobody’s lives were at risk. “Are you aware that you have a bird on your shoulder?”

“Oh, you mean Raiju?” Touma asked blankly. He reached up to his shoulder and scritched the bird’s chest briefly so it closed its eyes in pleasure. “Yeah, his dad came to me in a dream last night. Figured you didn’t mind the dragon, a thunderbird shouldn’t phase you.”

Nasuti took a deep, calming breath. Everyone but Touma, who had returned to his breakfast and looking vaguely like a zombie, eyed her and slowly pushed their chairs further down the table away from her.

“Oh, does anybody know where Seiji is?” Touma added, mostly mumbling. “Wanted t’show him Raiju now we’re both awake.”

The rest of the guys blinked around at each other just noticing that Seiji was, in fact, missing from the table. This was very unlike him; of all of them, he best knew the importance of family meals. Had he gotten in some sort of trouble? You’d think the armors would let them know, but they _were_ getting a bit rusty.

“No, you can’t come inside,” they heard Seiji’s voice come faintly from the other side of the door. “You’re a horse, horses aren’t allowed—okay, fine, you’re a unicorn. Stop that. Your horn can’t do anything to me yet, okay? For—”

It was rare to hear Seiji sound so openly frustrated. As one, the Troopers got up and snuck toward the door. Ryo, being the fearless leader, was the one to swing it slowly open, while the other three (and Nasuti) crowded around him. On the other side was Seiji, one hand on a hip as he glared down at a tiny foal. The foal glared back at him. Neither of them seemed to be willing to back down.

Nasuti cleared her throat delicately.

“I already have a thunderbird and a dragon _and_ a tiger in here,” she said icily. “The unicorn will have to remain outside, Seiji.”

Seiji held out his other hand toward Nasuti in a gesture that clearly said _See? Are you listening to the owner of the house?_ The unicorn threw its mane, whinnying unhappily, and danced briefly on its feet. Then it nuzzled Seiji’s stomach, to much snickering from the guys, and laid down where it was standing.

Seiji sighed and turned to them, his glare easily as terrible as Nasuti’s. Everyone scrambled back to their seats, looking innocent as they reached for food.

“I picked some berries to see if the bird would like them,” Seiji said to Touma, pulling said berries out of his pocket and putting them on a little plate. The bird swooped down from Touma’s shoulder, tilted its head sideways to get a good look at the offerings, and then started pecking at them with all evidence of enjoyment.

That was a lot easier than Ryo’s efforts with the dragon, but he tried not to pout too visibly. Maybe dragons were just naturally pickier than…whatever a thunderbird was. At least he was familiar with unicorns (enough so that he was never going to let Seiji live that one down), but this bird thing was new. He wasn’t sure how Touma even knew what it was, but then that was Touma for you. There was never any telling what he’d be familiar with.

They spent the rest of the day outside, playing with the unicorn foal, the thunderbird chick, and the baby dragon.

Raiju seemed to enjoy being passed around between everyone, chirping happily and occasionally startling them with extra loud peals of thunder, but when they tried to put him on the unicorn’s back he rebelled and flew up into the trees. They tried to just call him down, but he chirped at them more and more loudly until one of them wondered aloud if maybe he couldn’t figure out how to get down? But he just needed to _fly_ , Ryo argued, it wasn’t that difficult! He’d gotten up there, hadn’t he?

Regardless, Touma had to float up and get the bird down himself. He soothed it by petting it softly and whispering something to it that was probably dirty, because it was Touma. He hoped thunderbirds didn’t just mindlessly repeat things like parrots did, though that might end up hilariously awful.

Ryo’s dragon, on the other hand, seemed to be having the time of its life taking short rides on the unicorn’s back. The unicorn had turned its head to give the dragon a suspicious sort of look, which made Ryo nervous, but then it had just sort of shrugged and pranced back over to Seiji, tossing its head and dancing in front of him.

What a little show-off.

“Have you thought of a name for him yet?” Seiji asked when he returned the dragon to Ryo. “I’ve decided to name the unicorn Masamune.”

“…After your ancestor?” Touma asked. “Seriously? Seiji, man, you need to chill.”

“I thought I might name it Benien,” Ryo said.

Everyone stared at him blankly for a second, and then there was a long group sigh.

“What?” he asked. “What’s wrong with it?”

“Nothing, Ryo,” Shin said in a kind voice, patting him on the shoulder. “You name your dragon whatever you want. He’s your son.”

One by one, the guys wandered back inside. Except for Seiji, who headed off somewhere mysterious to find something to do with his unicorn. Did unicorns need stables, or did you just leave them outside to wander around and do unicorn things? He hoped Byakuen wouldn’t get to the poor thing; Seiji might be upset if he went outside looking for _his_ new son and found the tiger snacking on him instead.

Ryo pet Benien’s head and wondered idly where Byakuen was anyway. He hadn’t seen the tiger in a while.

Eh. He’d show up eventually.

@-`---

Life didn’t get any less weird the next day. The novelty of three mythological creatures seemed to have worn off for the time being. Seiji and Touma were arguing over some video game or another (Ryo couldn’t really be bothered to pay attention if it wasn’t Street Fighter), and Shin and Shuu had gone down to the lake to do…whatever it was those two did when they were alone. Ryo never bothered to think about it too much. If he thought too hard, things just got weird.

 _Anyway_ , since everyone else was otherwise occupied (he never asked where Nasuti was), Ryo went outside to hang out in the sunlight and wonder where Byakuen was some more. Benien seemed to appreciate this decision, even coming out from under Ryo’s shirt entirely to sunbathe on his chest.

Ryo must have fallen asleep, because the next thing he was aware of was a steady dripping on his face. He batted at the air in front of his face, grumpily wondering when the heck it decided it was going to rain, and got a good look right up the bottom of Shuu’s swim shorts.

“Gah!” he gasped, horrified, and scrambled away from him. Benien was upset by his sudden movement and dug his claws into Ryo’s chest so he wouldn’t go sliding off, but it was worth it because, seriously, what the hell Shuu? “What the _hell_ , Shuu?” he repeated out loud, just in case his horrified retreat wasn’t making his horror obvious enough.

Shuu _laughed at him_ , the little shit. Like he didn’t understand that he’d broken some sort of unalienable code between brothers-in-arms or something.

Oh, Ryo was going to get revenge for this. He was. And it was going to be beautiful. He’d recruit Touma for it and nobody would sleep well for a week.

Feeling better with the thought of Touma’s help, he ran a soothing hand over Benien to see if it would get him to stop trying to dig holes into Ryo’s spleen (it didn’t), then he carefully stood up. He had to do it carefully, because he had no idea where Shin was, and the two of them were liable to double team him if he wasn’t on guard.

Thankfully, Shin seemed to be missing for the moment. The only thing that was with Shuu was a…deer? No, it was kind of golden and scaly and it was floating on…a cloud or something? Oh, a Kirin. Okay, sure, that made sense.

When had life gotten this weird again? Oh, right, Arago. He’d just blame everything on the giant floating head and call it a day; it made as much sense as anything else.

“So, where’d you find the deer?” Ryo asked brightly. Shuu and the kirin _both_ glared at him, their expressions weirdly identical. “Gees, sorry. It’s a kirin, right?”

“Oh, is that what they’re called here?” Shuu asked curiously. “Momma always called them qilin. I guess it’s similar. I named this one Sui Lin, because she was given to me down at the lake.”

“Cute,” Ryo agreed drily.

“Isn’t she just?” Shuu cooed directly to the kirin. He tickled it—whoops, apparently _her_ —under the chin and she did some sort of weird body wiggle of joy. Shuu looked absolutely charmed by her, like a young mother with her infant. It was creepy as hell. “Let’s go inside, Lin Lin.”

…Hadn’t he just called her Sui Lin? He opened his mouth to ask for clarification on her name, but Shuu had thrown his arm over her back and was talking to her as he headed inside, and Ryo figured it was best to leave them alone. Oh well, he’d figure it out later.

“Oh, you’ve met Sui Lin already?” Shin’s voice said, and Ryo turned around to see a very wet Ronin staring after his best friend with a wry look. “He’s rather taken by her. It would be cute if we hadn’t been in the middle of something.”

Ryo wasn’t going to ask what they’d been doing. He knew better than that. Instead he turned his eyes to the horse…fish…thing that had followed Shin up to the house. He had no idea what the heck this thing was. The back end looked like a seahorse, but the front looked like a _horse_ horse, and for some reason it had wings? Okay then.

Shin followed his gaze and grinned, giving his horse thing a fond pat on the snout.

“This is High Tide,” he said. “She showed up right after Shuu left. I thought he might like to see her, since he just _up and left me_.”

Ryo watched Shin storm off with some trepidation. He was so not getting into the middle of that argument. He didn’t care if he was the leader; there were some spats that he just had no business interfering with.

Shin had only just opened the door when Ryo saw Shuu start backing out of it with Sui Lin pushed protectively behind him. Nasuti came out after him, a dangerous-looking metal fork in her hand and sparks shooting from her eyes.

“Do you boys think I’m hosting a zoo in here?” she asked. She didn’t raise her voice. Nasuti didn’t yell unless somebody was going to die. Usually whoever she was yelling at, if they didn’t move fast enough. “I didn’t let in the unicorn, and I’m not letting in the kirin or the, the, whatever you have following you, Shin. In fact, let me just go have a word with Touma right now….”

She turned back into the house without another word, and they could hear her stomping up the stairs. It might have actually been their imaginations, given that they were outside, but they knew what was happening. _They could hear it_.

They had a brief moment of silence for Touma.

“Hey, do you think Benien could ride on their backs?” Ryo asked, brightening up considerably as the idea occurred to him.

Shuu and Shin shared a long look with each other.

“It’s worth a shot,” Shin finally said, leading High Tide over with a cluck of his tongue.

@-`---

The next day was even _weirder_.

Breakfast was fine. Breakfast was quiet, peaceful even, despite Raiju flying in through the open window and preening Touma’s hair after giving Nasuti a beady stare. (Nasuti had clearly given up at this point, though she did glare back.)

All the guys went outside to spend time with their new animal companions, because Nasuti had banned any of them from coming in, except for Benien, who clung to Ryo’s skin. Ryo explained that he probably required the heat to live because, you know, dragon, and Nasuti threw her hands up in despair and holed up in her office for the rest of the day.

Ryo kind of felt bad for her but, come on, dragon.

They were trying to convince Raiju that Benien wouldn’t hurt him if he went for a ride on his back when Byakuen came slinking out of the trees, his shoulders down and looking extremely guilty. Ryo left Benien with Touma, because Benien seemed to be having a good time pretending to threaten the thunderbird, and ran over to his tiger.

“What’s wrong, Byakuen?” he asked, falling to his knees and rubbing Byakuen’s face. Byakuen rumbled at him. “Did you eat something you weren’t supposed to?”

Byakuen gave him a mournful look, then half-turned to look behind him. Ryo leaned to the side to look around him, and promptly fell over in surprise. Were those kittens!?

“Byakuen, where did you get all of those!?” Ryo cried.

Byakuen rumbled again and then just collapsed to the ground with a loud flump. The kittens, and they were definitely just that, kittens, not even tiger cubs, took this as a cue to play. One of them pounced on Byakuen’s tail, falling to its side to gnaw on it and kick it with its hind legs. Two others jumped up onto Byakuen’s back, running up and down his long body, and a fourth climbed into his head and started gnawing contently at one of his ears. The fifth and final kitten came up to Ryo, sniffing cautiously at his leg. Dazedly, Ryo reached out to pet it.

“Kittens,” he said faintly. “You leave for three days and you come home with a litter of _kittens_. They’re not even yours!”

Byakuen moaned again and hid his face underneath one of his massive paws. The kitten chewing on his ear slid over it and landed with a surprised look on the ground, got up with a little shake, and then ran around Byakuen’s side to pounce on the one batting at Ryo’s leg.

“You know you have to admit,” Touma said, “despite everything _else_ that showed up, the kittens have to be the most unbelievable part. By the way, congratulations on the quintuplets, Byakuen. That’s a hell of a job.”

Byakuen looked up at Touma and growled.

“What are you boys doing out here?” Nasuti called, coming out the backdoor with a suspicious look on her face. It softened a little when she saw Byakuen laying on his side looking tragic, but Ryo was still hesitant to move. What if she was angry about the kittens too?

When she got close enough to see what Byakuen’s dramatic face was about, her entire demeanor changed. Her eyes _sparkled_ liked a cartoon, she lifted both of her hands to her mouth, and Ryo swore there was a high-pitched squeal escaping her. He’d never heard anything like it, at least not from her. It was even more surreal than the kittens.

“Are those _kittens_?” she asked, her voice high-pitched. “They’re crawling all over him! This is the cutest thing I’ve ever seen in my life!”

“…What,” Touma said, which everybody silently agreed with.

Nasuti ignored all of them and rushed over to the tiger, picking up one of the kittens that was on his back. It meowed at her, not sounding pleased to be grabbed so suddenly, but when she cuddled it against her chest it seemed perfectly happy to be there.

“Oh, let’s just bring you all inside,” she cooed to the kitten. “We don’t want any of you getting hurt in the woods, do we? Such cute little fluffy toesies….”

Byakuen rumbled unhappily and followed her. The rest of the kittens tumbled along after him, like a row of ducklings following their mother. Nasuti closed the door behind them all, giving the guys a final look that let them know exactly what would happen if they tried to bring any of their companions in too.


End file.
